The main goal of DECOAT is to enable circular use of textiles and plastic parts with (multilayer) ‘coatings’, which are typically not recyclable yet. These ‘coatings’ comprise functional and performance coatings and paints as well as adhesion layers. Therefore, novel triggerable smart polymer material systems and the corresponding recycling processes will be developed. The triggerable solutions will be based on smart additives (like microcapsules or microwave triggered additives) for the ‘coating’ formulations that will be activated by a specific trigger (heat, humidity, microwave, chemical). A continuous recycling pilot plant will demonstrate the novel DECOAT principle that allows upgrading existing mechanical recycling by adding tools for sorting by and activation of the trigger. The optimal use of the Creasolv® process for recycling of coated parts will be assessed. The focus is on recycling of the bulk material, but re-use of the coatings materials themselves will also be tackled. Using these recycling processes, circular use of demo cases for outdoor gear, household electronics and automotive parts will be validated. The novel triggerable DECOAT technologies will create new markets for additives, coatings, paints and adhesives fulfilling the recycling need. The concepts will support designers and product developers for making ‘recyclable-by-design’ products. This will create direct business opportunities for the DECOAT partners and serve as examples for promoting DECOAT solutions to the wider stakeholder community. The targeted products (parts) are coated plastic from cars, electrical and electronic equipment and coated textiles which produce annually almost 3.5 million tons waste. DECOAT will lead to a decrease in landfilling of ca. 75% and a reduction in the carbon footprint by at least 30% for these products. By enabling their recycling, DECOAT is expected to generate on medium term a novel market of over 150 million in Europe (or ca 500 jobs).

In the need to improve the efficiency and driving range of electric vehicles (EVs), one strategy is the weight reduction of the global vehicle. There are already available solutions based on advanced light materials with promising structural properties but they still need further development to increase their TRL and reach the market. Furthermore, increasing environmental awareness and forthcoming stricter regulations demands the adoption of circular economy principles across the entire vehicle life-cycle. To respond to this challenge, ALMA will develop a novel BEV structure for a passenger car with 45% weight reduction potential compared to current baseline (15% additional reduction if compared to prior-art solutions) at affordable costs (below 3€/Kg-saved of additional cost), thus enabling up to 2.2 KWh/100Km efficiency increase and 11% LCA improvement. For this purpose, ALMA will develop a multi-material modular platform (BIW, chassis and closures) made of a combination of Advanced High Strength Steels (AHHS), Advanced-SMC and steel-hybrid materials, characterized with multiscale model-based tools. ALMA will adopt circular economy principles from early stages through the application of eco-design strategies to create a novel BEV platform “made to be recycled”, using a structural reversible bonding technology to enable the separation of components at the end-of-life (EoL) for repair and reuse. A ground-breaking health monitoring system based on acoustic emissions will be integrated in the structure to detect and locate damage while in-service. At last, efficient recycling and material recovery options will be analysed to complete the circular loop. ALMA involves a well balance group of 9 partners from 4 different EU countries, 5 of them are market-oriented companies (with 2 SMEs), being one an automotive OEM. It also includes 3 RTOs and one international association. ALMA has also gathered the support of 15 external supporting partners in the Advisory Board.

Plastics bring unprecedented value in terms of convenience, versatility of design and lightweight to European consumers as well as increasingly advanced performances even in high end applications. But only 31% of plastic packaging are currently recycled due to infra-developed technologies or to their unsatisfactory economic viability. This is in fact aggravated by considering plastics as commodity where their economic value is linked to a single use, often not taking into account the potentially generated end of life hurdles. In line with the just released Plastic Strategy for Europe, the time has come to stop the depletion, landfilling and incineration and shift to a Circular Model in the plastic sector improving the recycling rate but also the value of secondary raw materials from plastic recycling. As such, with an overarching mission to maximise the valorisation of our finite plastic resources, based on the CreaSolv® process (CreaSolv® is a registered trademark of CreaCycle GmbH) patented by the partner FRAUNHOFER, which will be upscaled and digitased, MultiCycle will deliver an industrial recycling pilot plant for thermoplastic-based multi-materials. This is a solvent based selective extraction process which allows recovering pure plastics in mixed wastes but also fibres without downgrading. The later compounding of recovered materials will also be optimised in terms of process and formulation. Our economically and environmentally sustainable MultiCycle process will be demonstrated in 2 main large volume sectors (as providers of waste to recycle and end users of the recycled materials): -Multilayer packaging but also flexible films that cannot be recycled cost effectively to date and altogether account for around 50% of plastic packaging, i.e. ca. 10 millions tons/year in EU. -Fibre reinforced thermoplastic composites for the automotive sector from which plastics constitute around 16% of End-of-Life Vehicles weigth, i.e. ca. 1 million tons/year in EU.

Recyclable materials recovery is a key element of the circular economy and the EU Green Deal. It is typically performed manually at large scale Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) installed close to dense urban areas. Recent advances in AI and robotics have enabled the automation of several MRF activities. However, they target large waste volumes and are not cost-effective for smaller, less accessible areas. To accommodate the latter, portable material recovery units can be deployed nearby. Despite the increasing demand for portable units, offerings lack intelligent, automated components that could significantly increase their productivity. To fill this gap, RECLAIM will develop a portable, robotic MRF (prMRF) tailored to small-scale material recovery. The proposal exploits well-tested technology in robotics, AI and data analytics which is improved to facilitate distributed material recovery. RECLAIM adopts a modular multi-robot/multi-gripper approach for material recovery, based on low cost Robotic Recycling Workers (RoReWos). An AI module combines imaging in the visual and infrared domain to identify, localize and categorize recyclables. The output of this module is used by a multi-RoReWo team that implements efficient and accurate material sorting. Further, a citizen science approach will increase social sensitivity to the Green Deal. This is accomplished via a novel Recycling Data-Game that enables and encourages citizens to participate in project RTD activities by providing annotations to be used in deep learning for the re-training of the AI module. RECLAIM developments will be implemented and repeatedly assessed in demanding, real material recovery tasks. Three different scenarios will attest its effectiveness and applicability in a broad range of locations that face material recovery challenges. This will pave the way for the prMRF market uptake and provide a major boost in making Europe zero polluting, climate-neutral, sustainable and globally competitive.

The healthcare sector is hindered by several barriers that hamper the application of circular economy principles (e.g. the safety restrictions of the domain limit the use of recycled materials due to the need of materials biocompatibility, and safety in products to be used in the human body). Led by a multidisciplinary consortium of 39 partners (plus 13 industry affiliates) from 15 EU countries plus UK and USA, ENKORE aim to tackle challenges and develop an ecoDesign framework that supports the development of safe and environmental compliant devices eco-responsible packaging, which minimize the environmental impact, reduce the carbon footprint, and maximize the use and preservation of resources. The main goal is to connect the design of the medical devices packages with the end-of-life stage, thus the technologies that support circularity are taken into account at the medical device conception stage. ENKORE framework will be validated in 5 Reference Use Cases (RUCs), led by 5 different health regions that bring HPCs and policy maker, 3 large EU hospitals and the reference network for European Regional and Local Health Authorities (EUREGHA). The project developments and RUCs are supported by several associations and NGOs, a packaging manufacturer and a group of SMEs and researchers, specialists in circularity, LCA, social sciences, environment, circularity, and materials. The validation of the framework shall provide evidence to work with policymakers, creating new or revised standards and create tangible/quantitative evidence. Policy making and regulatory engagement will be strongly performed. The methods and tools comprise Environmental and Social Life Cycle Assessment (ELCA/SLCA), Circularity Calculator (CC) and Digital Product Passport (DPP) approaches, which could be adapted during the second stage of the proposal.